CŒUR DE LION AT THE BIER OF HIS FATHER.

The body of Henry the Second lay in state in the Abbey-church of Fontevraud, where it was visited by Richard Cœur de Lion, who, on beholding it, was struck with horror and remorse, and reproached himself bitterly for that rebellious conduct which had been the means of bringing his Father to an untimely grave.

TORCHES were blazing clear,
Hymns pealing deep and slow,

Where a King lay stately on his bier,
In the Church of Fontevraud;

Banners of battle o'er him hung,

And warriors slept beneath,

And light, as noon's broad light, was flung
On the settled face of Death.

On the settled face of Death,

A strong and ruddy glare,

Though dimm'd at times by the censer's breath,
Yet it fell still brightest there :

As if each deeply-furrow'd trace
Of earthly years to show-
Alas! that sceptred mortal's race
Had surely closed in woe!

The marble floor was swept

By many a long dark stole,

As the kneeling priests, round him that slept,
Sang mass for the parted soul.

And solemn were the strains they pour'd

In the stillness of the night,

With the cross above, and the crown and sword,
And the silent King in sight.—

There was heard a heavy clang,
As of steel-girt men the tread,

And the tombs and the hollow pavement rang
With a sounding thrill of dread.

And the holy chaunt was hush'd awhile,
As by the torch's flame

A gleam of arms, up the sweeping aisle,
With a mail-clad leader came.

He came with haughty look,

A dark glance high and clear,

But his proud heart through its breast-plate shook

When he stood beside the bier.

He stood there still, with a drooping brow,

And clasp'd hands o'er it raised;

For his Father lay before him low,

It was Cœur de Lion gazed.

And silently he strove

With the workings of his breast;

But there's more in late repentant love
Than steel may keep suppress'd.

And his tears brake forth, at last, like rain.—
Men held their breath in awe,

For his face was seen by his warrior-train,

And he reck'd not that they saw.

He look'd upon the Dead,
And sorrow seem'd to lie,
A weight of sorrow, ev'n as lead,
Pale on the fast-shut eye.

He stoop'd-and kiss'd the frozen cheek,
And the hand of lifeless clay,

Till bursting words-yet all too weak-
Gave his soul's passion way.

"Oh, father! is it vain,

This late remorse and deep?
Speak to me, Father! once again!-
I weep-behold, I weep!
Alas! my guilty pride and ire!

Were but this work undone,

I would give England's crown, my Sire,
To hear thee bless thy Son.

"Speak to me!-mighty grief
Ere now the dust hath stirr'd!
Hear me! but hear me !-Father, Chief,
My King! I must be heard!—
Hush'd, hush'd!-how is it that I call,
And that thou answerest not?
When was it thus?-Woe, woe for all
The love my soul forgot!

"Thy silver hairs I see,
So still, so sadly bright!

And, Father, Father! but for me,
They had not been so white

I bore thee down, high heart! at last,
No longer couldst thou strive ;—
Oh! for one moment of the past,
To kneel and say 'Forgive!'

"Thou wert the noblest King,
On royal throne e're seen;

And thou didst wear, in knightly ring,
Of all, the stateliest mien ;

And thou didst prove, where spears are proved,
In war, the bravest heart--

Oh! ever the renown'd and loved

Thou wert and there thou art!

"Thou that my boyhood's guide
Didst take fond joy to be!-

The times I have sported at thy side,
And climb'd thy parent knee!
And there before the blessed shrine,
My Sire, I see thee lie,-

How will that sad still face of thine

Look en me till I die !"

VOL. IX. No. 49.-1825.

10

F. H.

"Nought but a blank remains, a dead void space,

A step of life that promised such a race."-Dryden.

NAPOLEON has now sent us back from the grave sufficient echoes of his living renown: the twilight of posthumous fame has lingered long enough over the spot where the sun of his glory set, and his name must at length repose in the silence, if not in the darkness of night. In this busy and evanescent scene, other spirits of the age are rapidly snatched away, claiming our undivided sympathies and regrets, until in turn they yield to some newer and more absorbing grief. Another name is now added to the list of the mighty departed, a name whose influence upon the hopes and fears, the fates and fortunes of our countrymen, has rivalled, and perhaps eclipsed that of the defunct "child and champion of Jacobinism," while it is associated with all the sanctions of legitimate government, all the sacred authorities of social order and our most holy religion. We speak of one, indeed, under whose warrant heavy and incessant contributions were imposed upon our fellow-citizens, but who exacted nothing without the signet and the sign manual of most devout Chancellors of the Exchequer. Not to dally longer with the sympathies of our readers, we think it right to premonish them that we are composing an epicedium upon no less distinguished a personage than the Lottery, whose last breath, after many penultimate puffs, has been sobbed forth by sorrowing contractors, as if the world itself were about to be converted into a blank. There is a fashion of eulogy, as well as of vituperation; and though the Lottery stood for some time in the latter predicament, we hesitate not to assert that "multis ille bonis flebilis occidit." Never have we joined in the senseless clamour which condemned the only tax whereto we became voluntary contributors, the only resource which gave the stimulus without the danger or infatuation of gambling, the only alembic which in these plodding days sublimised our imaginations, and filled them with more delicious dreams than ever flitted athwart the sensorium of Alnaschar.

Never can the writer forget when, as a child, he was hoisted upon a servant's shoulder in Guildhall, and looked down upon the installed and solemn pomp of the then drawing Lottery. The two awful cabinets of iron, upon whose massy and mysterious portals, the royal initials were gorgeously emblazoned, as if after having deposited the unfulfilled prophecies within, the King himself had turned the lock and still retained the key in his pocket ;-the blue-coat boy, with his naked arm, first converting the invisible wheel, and then diving into the dark recess for a ticket;-the grave and reverend faces of the commissioners eyeing the announced number;-the scribes below calmly committing it to their huge books;-the anxious countenances of the surrounding populace, while the giant figures of Gog and Magog, like presiding deities, looked down with a grim silence upon the whole proceeding,constituted altogether a scene, which combined with the sudden wealth

* Since writing this article, we have been informed that the object of our funeral oration is not definitively dead, but only moribund. So much the better; we shall have an opportunity of granting the request made to Walter by one of the children in the wood, and "kill him two times." The Abbé de Vertot having a siege to write, and not receiving the materials in time, composed the whole from his inven tion: shortly after its completion, the expected documents arrived, when he threw them aside, exclaiming " You are of no use to me now; I have carried the town"

supposed to be lavished from those inscrutable wheels, was well calcu-
lated to impress the imagination of a boy with reverence and amaze-
ment. Jupiter, seated between the two fatal urns of good and evil, the
blind Goddess with her cornucopia, the Parca wielding the distaff, the
thread of life, and the abhorred shears, seemed but dim and shadowy
abstractions of mythology, when I had gazed upon an assemblage exer-
cising, as I dreamt, a not less eventful power, and all presented to me
in palpable and living operation. Reason and experience, ever at their
old spiteful work of catching and destroying the bubbles which youth
delighted to follow, have indeed dissipated much of this illusion, but my
mind so far retained the influence of that early impression, that I have
ever since continued to deposit my humble offerings at its shrine when-
ever the ministers of the Lottery went forth with type and trumpet to
announce its periodical dispensations; and though nothing has been
doled out to me from its undiscerning coffers but blanks, or those more
vexatious tantalizers of the spirit, denominated small prizes, yet do I
hold myself largely indebted to this most generous diffuser of universal
happiness. Ingrates that we are! are we to be thankful for no benefits
that are not palpable to sense, to recognise no favours that are not of
marketable value, to acknowledge no wealth unless it can be counted
with the five fingers? If we admit the mind to be the sole depositary
of genuine joy, where is the bosom that has not been elevated into a
temporary elysium by the magic of the Lottery? Which of us has not
converted his ticket, or even his sixteenth share of one, into a nest-egg
of Hope, upon which he has sate brooding in the secret roosting-places
of his heart, and hatched it into a thousand fantastical apparitions?
What a startling revelation of the passions if all the aspirations en-
gendered by the Lottery could be made manifest! Many an impecu-
niary epicure has gloated over his locked-up warrant for future wealth,
as a means of realising the dream of his namesake in the Alchemist,-
"My meat shall all come in in Indian shells,
Dishes of agate set in gold, and studded

With emeralds, sapphires, hyacinths and rubies;
The tongues of carps, dormice, and camels' heels
Boil'd i' the spirit of Sol, and dissolved in pearl,
(Apicius' diet 'gainst the epilepsy ;)

And I will eat these broths with spoons of amber,
Headed with diamant and carbuncle.-
My footboy shall eat pheasants, calvered salmons,
Knots, godwits, lampreys; I myself will have
The beards of barbels served:-instead of salads
Oil'd mushrooms, and the swelling unctuous paps
Of a fat pregnant sow, newly cut off,

Dress'd with an exquisite and poignant sauce,
For which I'll say unto my cook-'There 's gold,
Go forth, and be a knight.'"

Many a doating lover has kissed the scrap of paper whose promissory shower of gold was to give up to him his otherwise unattainable Danaë: Nimrods have transformed the same narrow symbol into a saddle, by which they have been enabled to bestride the backs of peerless hunters; while nymphs have metamorphosed its Protean form into

"Rings, gaudes, conceits,

"Knacks, trifles, nosegays, sweetmeats,"

and all the braveries of dress, to say nothing of the obsequious hus

band, the two-footman'd carriage, and the opera-box. By the simple charm of this numbered and printed rag, gamesters have, for a time at least, recovered their losses, spendthrifts have cleared off mortgages from their estates, the imprisoned debtor has leapt over his lofty boundary of circumscription and restraint, and revelled in all the joys of liberty and fortune; the cottage-walls have swelled out into more goodly proportion than those of Baucis and Philemon; poverty has tasted the luxuries of competence, labour has lolled at ease in a perpetual armchair of idleness, sickness has been bribed into banishment, life has been invested with new charms, and death deprived of its former terrors. Nor have the affections been less gratified than the wants, appetites, and ambitions of mankind. By the conjurations of the same potent spell, kindred have lavished anticipated benefits upon one another, and charity upon all. Let it be termed a delusion; a fool's paradise is better than the wise man's Tartarus; be it branded as an Ignis fatuus, it was at least a benevolent one, which instead of beguiling its followers into swamps, caverns, and pitfalls, allured them on with all the blandishments of enchantment to a garden of Eden, an ever-blooming elysium of delight. True, the pleasures it bestowed were evanescent, but which of our joys are permanent? and who so inexperienced as not to know that anticipation is always of higher relish than reality, which strikes a balance both in our sufferings and enjoyments. "The fear of ill exceeds the ill we fear," and fruition, in the same proportion, invariably falls short of hope. "Men are but children of a larger growth," who may amuse themselves for a long time in gazing at the reflection of the moon in the water, but, if they jump in to grasp it, they may grope for ever, and only get the farther from their object. He is the wisest who keeps feeding upon the future, and refrains as long as possible from undeceiving himself, by converting his pleasant speculations into disagreeable certainties.

The true mental epicure always purchased his ticket early, and postponed enquiry into its fate to the last possible moment, during the whole of which intervening period he had an imaginary twenty thousand locked up in his desk,—and was not this well worth all the money? Who would scruple to give twenty pounds interest for even the ideal enjoyment of as many thousands during two or three months? "Crede quod habes, et habes" and the usufruct of such a capital is surely not dear at such a price. Some years ago, a gentleman in passing along Cheapside saw the figures 1069, of which number he was the sole proprietor, flaming on the window of a lottery-office as a capital prize. Somewhat flurried by this discovery, not less welcome than unexpected, he resolved to walk round St. Paul's that he might consider in what way to communicate the happy tidings to his wife and family; but upon repassing the shop, he observed that the number was altered to 10,069, and upon enquiry, had the mortification to learn that his ticket was a blank, and had only been stuck up in the window by a mistake of the clerk. This effectually calmed his agitation, but he always speaks of himself as having once possessed twenty thousand pounds, and maintains that his ten minutes' walk round St. Paul's was worth ten times the purchase-money of the ticket. A prize thus obtained has moreover this special advantage; it is beyond the reach of fate, it cannot be squandered, bankruptcy cannot lay siege to it, friends cannot pull it down, nor enemies blow it up; it bears a charmed life, and none of